PART I.
THE FIRST PHANTOM.
Don't tell me that it wasn't a knocker.

I had seen it often enough, and I ought to know.

So ought the three-o'clock beer, in dirty high-lows, swinging himself over the railing, or executing a demoniacal jig upon the doorstep; so ought the butcher, although butchers as a general thing are scornful of such trifles; so ought the postman, to whom knockers of the most extravagant description were merely human weaknesses, that were to be pitied and used.

And so ought, for the matter of that, etc., etc., etc.
But then it was SUCH a knocker.

A wild, extravagant, and utterly incomprehensible knocker.